Jane Hyun some years ago coined the phrase in her book focusing on Asians in the workplace, Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling: Career Strategies for Asians, which looked at the slow progress of Asian Americans inside America's largest companies.

New research in Australia being released ahead of International Women's Day next week, shows Australians from Asian backgrounds, and other non-European backgrounds including Middle Eastern and African descent, are not being promoted into leadership roles.

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The vast majority of people in ASX leadership roles are non-culturally diverse men.Credit:Louie Douvis

The research compiled by Diversity Council Australia and Deakin University, with the support of CPA Australia, investigated the representation of culturally diverse women in the leadership ranks of all Australian listed companies between 2004 and 2015.

The actual number of female culturally diverse ASX leaders was very small: only 15 of all 1482 CEOs, 44 of all 2327 senior executives, 188 of all 7491 directors and 55 of all 1350 CFOs.

Women are moving into ASX leadership roles very slowly. Since 2004, the percentage has increased by about 4 per cent.

The percentage of female ASX leaders who are culturally diverse plateaued between 2013 and 2015 – for almost all ASX groupings (ASX overall, ASX 500, ASX 200, ASX 100) and all roles.

"From these results, it would appear that culturally diverse women are experiencing a 'double jeopardy' in ASX leadership; where their gender and culture combine to make it more difficult than non-culturally diverse women or even culturally diverse men to access leadership roles," she said.

"We really need to look hard at what biases, either conscious or unconscious, are preventing these women from progressing to the top."

Conrad Liveris, who commentates in diversity issues and has been compiling his own research based on company annual reports, found that taking into account both men and women in the workforce, currently less than 3.9 per cent of senior management (those who report to the CEO) in the ASX 200 are not of white Anglo-Saxon heritage.

"Straight, white, able-bodied men aged 40-69 years, which represents the majority of Australian leadership, are 8.4 per cent of the population. Yet Australian leadership is blindingly white with only 3.9 per cent of ASX executives with descent from non-European backgrounds."

In the ASX 200, he said there are nine female CEOs, being 4.5 per cent of all ASX 200 CEOs. The rest are males –13 CEOs are named Andrew and another 13 named Peter, 10 are named John, nine are named David and eight are named Michael.

From more than 1000 executives in the ASX 200 just six CEOs are not of West European descent. They run Altium, Cleanaway, GUD Holdings, Newcrest, Sirtex and TPG. There are no Indigenous Australians in the list.

And of the 40 executives from non-Anglo backgrounds, just six are women. They are primarily Asian, with a few of Pacific Islander, African and East European descent.

Compare this to Australia's overall make-up: one in every four Australians was born overseas.

Another survey being released today by Women's Agenda based on the responses of more than 2000 women across the country, found that most females in business want better pay.

About 40 per cent of survey respondents ticked "looking to earn more" as one of their ambitions for the next 24 months. It came up well ahead of other options like "aiming to get a promotion" (32.7 per cent), and looking to "achieve better flexible working options" (22.5 per cent).